The Enduring Villain- Germans as Nazi Stereotypes in American Cin

W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1998 The Enduring Villain: Germans as Nazi Stereotypes in American Cinema Christine Lokotsch Aube College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Aube, Christine Lokotsch, "The Enduring Villain: Germans as Nazi Stereotypes in American Cinema" (1998) Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Paper 1539626154 https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-qfxe-y652 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks For more information, please contact scholarworks@wm.edu THE ENDURING VILLAIN: GERMANS AS NAZI STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN CINEMA A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of American Studies The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Christine Lokotsch Aube 1998 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, December 1908 Arthi Christy Bums nnifer /Taylor ii To my parents and my husband, without whom none of this would have been possible TABLE OF CONTENTS \ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT vi INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I HOLLYWOOD’S STEREOTYPICAL GERMAN THROUGH WORLD WAR II 10 CHAPTER II NAZI STEREOTYPES IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MOVIES 38 CHAPTER III THE GERMAN AND HIS IMAGE AFTER WORLD WAR II 73 BIBLIOGRAPHY 97 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writer wishes to express her appreciation to Professor Arthur Knight for his guidance, encouragement, and thoughtful criticism The author also thanks Professors Christy Bums and Jennifer Taylor for their careful reading and helpful suggestions ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to analyze the development and popularity of German stereotypes in American cinema from the inception of the medium until the present day, with a special focus on the emerging of a specific, the Hitchcockian, stereotype The investigation centered on the depiction of male antagonists in mainstream Hollywood productions, films in which studios as well as filmmakers had a vested interest, which elicited critical responses, and which reached and influenced broad audiences The findings show a historical as well as contemporary preoccupation with Germans as negative characters who, from the onset of World War II on, were increasingly inscribed with Nazi traits These stereotypes have evolved over time but are still a prevalent staple in movie-making and related cultural branches Applying psychoanalytical theories, this study suggests that the presence of negative German stereotypes can be attributed to a still lingering fear of Germany and Germans, but also to the usefulness of this stereotype as a tool to cope with the domestic unrest and geopolitical turmoil Americans had to face in the past decades Hollywood’s enduring interest in Nazi or Nazi-like villains, together with the relative absence of positive German characters and the relegation of German actors to antagonistic roles, has resulted in a conflation of the concepts of Nazism and Germanness in American movie culture THE ENDURING VILLAIN: GERMANS AS NAZI STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN CINEMA INTRODUCTION We order our experiences through the symbolic act, or, at least, we construct an acceptable order fo r them through the use o f symbolic language taken from the society or culture in which we live The roots o f this symbolization are in the need fo r order; its form is the essential symbolic language o f any given worldview Thus science and religion, literature and art, the representation o f the “real ” and the “fictive, ” all exist in terms o f symbolic language - Sander Gilman (1991) [Germany's] past will not go away precisely because its representations are everywhere - Anton Kaes (1989) Germany is Hitler and Hitler is Germany - Rudolf Hess (1934) “Are you German?” This question is posed by a French archeologist to a small­ headed, but otherwise oversized, ironclad alien warlord in the science fiction movie The Fifth Element (1997).1 And this allusion to Germany’s militant past is not the only anti-German reference in the film: the primary antagonist, Zorg (Gary Oldman), with his rabid rhetoric, small beard and black, distinctly parted hairdo is clearly fashioned after Adolf Hitler These curious Germanic characters in an international production - the film is the result of French-U.S cooperation - is only one of many examples of the ongoing presence of Nazi-like characters in big-budget movies Germans as a group, and by their unique Nazi-association after the Anschluss, Austrians, are apparently singled out by Hollywood as the one Axis power that still poses a considerable threat to humanity, unlike their former consorts: Italian and Japanese/Asian characters, while also stereotyped and often vilified, seem to have been romanticized in past decades, to the point where films with Italian or Asian ethnic subject matter form their own popular genres.2 By comparison, the image of a militant, villainous Germanic persona pervades not only World War II Allies’ movie industries, but also surfaces in TV series, commercials, and even music videos The root of this cinematic phenomenon may be found in Hollywood’s anti-German imagery around World War II With movie production at an all-time high during and right after the war, the message that Germans were generally evil Nazis was received by hundreds of thousands of entertainment-hungry American spectators.3 This potent propaganda was, as Dana Polan has noted, compounded by the fact that most of contemporary Hollywood presented Nazis according to the conventions of the gangster film genre.4 The resulting stereotype, while certainly not the first negative depiction o f Germans in American cinema, has been a prominent feature ever since Traditionally, academic work on cinematic representation has focused on the prejudiced depiction of women, repressed minorities, non-American exotic cultures, or religious groups The stereotyping of Germans is the topic of comparatively little scholastic discourse, despite the quasi-omnipresence of Germanic or Nazified villains in post-World War II films.5 The relative absence of positive characterizations of Germans seem a noteworthy omission - Germany’s 50-year commitment to democracy has obviously not diminished the popularity or usefulness of the German as Nazi antagonist On the contrary, it seems that is has become more common to confine the imagery of Germans to their Nazi past This continued Hollywood practice and the conscious use of the powerful German/Nazi stereotype deserve an 88 eyes, and a scarred face - the arch-stereotype of a Nazi.27 On the search for a spy, he sticks his head in the car window and interrogates the driver, who outsmarts the suspicious apprehender by having suddenly turned into a woman, thereby demonstrating the superior wit of the American consumer.28 That the advertising agency uses this specific German stereotype for a 30-second spot is evidence for the power o f that representation The audience does not need a lengthy introduction to the evil character - drawing from his formal education and previous encounters with similar-looking images, the viewer instantly recognizes mortal danger for the fictitious spy who has to employ extraordinary means to escape impending arrest and, by the implication of Gestapo-methods, torture and murder The fact that the context of the commercial is deliberately humorous does not reduce the suggestive violent potential of the stereotype A similar example that aroused heated discussions and shows American preoccupation with high-impact Nazi notoriety is an episode of the 30-minute situation comedy Seinfeld, entitled “Soup Nazi.” Unlike the 1960s comedy series Hogan’s Heroes, which revolved entirely around Nazis, this contemporary version does not need to explicate the - Germanmade - threat Indeed, it takes only a short amount of screen time for the viewers to identify a soup cook’s obsession with order and discipline as an - openly stated Nazi trait, and the protagonists’ intentionally brief contacts with the cook serve to highlight the vigor of the Nazi image In music videos, Nazis and their swastika symbols are used to signify totalitarianism, as in the various video clips taken from Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd - The Wall (1982), to illustrate history, like in Pearl Jam’s 89 Do the Evolution (1998), or to tell short fictions, as in Pat Benator’s Shadows o f the Night (1994).30 Germans as scheming Nazis with a thirst for world domination have seen many incarnations over the past decades, obvious and implied, serious and satirical, acted and animated The image o f Germans as Nazis and the subsequent symbiosis of these characters is, in light of recent British and American TV and movie productions, obviously not a phenomenon that ended with unconditional surrender in 1945 During World War II, filmmakers inscribed the German so thoroughly with Nazi traits that a separation has proven nearly impossible The lineage of upstanding Americans who battled Nazism stretches from Edward G Robinson and Donald Duck before and during the war, to contemporaries Lance Henriksen and McBane - and the encounters always end with the triumph of U.S values.31 A possible explanation for the persistent Nazi stereotype is its usefulness as a tool to deal with deeply unsettling occurrences for Americans, both at home and abroad The second half o f the twentieth century brought major changes to U.S society and the geopolitical situation of the country The domestic turmoil started with the homecoming of traumatized veterans, and continued through the McCarthy era, civil and women’s rights struggles, Vietnam protests, the rise of crime and the perceived deterioration of family values, to name a few America’s foreign affairs were even more chaotic after 1945 and the onset of the nuclear era: the Cold War brought on the Korean and Indochina wars and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the conflicts in the Middle East spawned various U.S policy crises like the Iranian affairs and the Gulf War The collapse of the communist empire with all its destabilizing ramifications 90 also serves as a source of dread for Americans The ability of virtually all citizens to follow the country’s, as well as the world’s, dire political and social situation via TV only compounds the awareness of chaos and instability - stereotyping becomes not only convenient, but necessary All these events are of course experienced and reflected in Hollywood - and in the filmmaking community, the basic desire for order can be easily fulfilled with the deployment of the known evil German/Nazi stereotype That the American movie industry often chooses this particular stereotype to “preserve [their] illusion of control over the self and the world”32 might also be a result of the ongoing discourse on the Holocaust - the apex o f a historically documented German tendency toward totalitarianism and inhumane brutality Obviously, American filmmakers and audiences are still deeply shocked by the Nazi genocide, as evidenced for example by the Oscar-winning Schindler’s List, a current documentary series on the History Channel named H itler’s Henchmen, and non-filmic publications like the 1996 bestseller H itler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Harvard historian Daniel Goldhagen Additionally, Americans have worried about Germany’s commitment to democracy After the war, policy makers contemplated the punitive Morgenthau * Plan, which would have de-industrialized the country, and ultimately implemented the Marshall Plan - billions o f dollars were paid to ensure loyalty against a perceived Communist threat The ensuing wirtschaftswunder and rapidly rising prosperity in the former enemy country must have unsettled Americans, who had to accept Germany as an economic superpower again and to respect the production stamp “made in Germany” as well as luxury products like Porsche and Mercedes However, the main psychological reason for maintaining the Nazi stereotype is probably only to a small part economically motivated The deep political American distrust of Germans and the fear o f a country that had threatened large parts of the world with war for the first half of the century still lingers; the recent reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany with the German Democratic Republic helped sustain the image of the imperialistic German who might again strive for world domination This American suspicion was voiced very clearly in a five-part feature series that aired on NBC in 1990; the title of the Tom Brokaw-moderated series (which was later copied by ABC): “One Germany - A Fourth Reich?”34 The shows included clips of Holocaust-documentaries, 1940s newsreel material of endless columns of marching Nazi soldiers and Hitler speeches, and statistics that proved to Americans that Germany does now have the largest population in Europe by 20 Million - a thinly veiled allusion to Hitler’s demand of more lebensraum for his expanding citizenry And while, in its final installment, the news special concluded that Germany has seen too much suffering during the wars and the years of its formal division, it still provided gripping evidence that Americans - and this includes, as Sander Gilman has suggested, the artist - are stereotyping the German as Nazi to express a terrifying angst o f a new war with the long-proven German aggressor This anxiety, in conjunction with ongoing public and filmic discourse on the incomprehensible realities of the Holocaust and the horrors of World War II combat will probably sustain the German/Nazi image indefinitely Germans, who have never been popular film characters, are perpetually inscribed with Nazi traits, and German actors are widely relegated to play variations of the Nazi stereotype: the “good” soldier, the mad scientist, and the Nazi(fied) villain According to genre, these characters were either confined to monolithic antagonism and are therefore akin to the one-dimensional Nazis of mainstream World War II films - or emerge in the Hitchcockian tradition of the conflicted, humane killer like Germans in war films or Holocaust accounts The former stereotype serves as a shorthand for evil, a flat but potent force that bears little traces o f humanity and therefore requires little attention or responsible reflection by audiences The latter, Hitchcockian representation evokes a more powerful response, for viewers are prompted to face the similarities between themselves and the villain and therefore their intimate relationship with human-made evil The Hitchcockian German stereotype functions as an agent to not only relegate human aggression and sadism to Nazism - thus controlling these disturbing phenomena - but allowing positive traits and vulnerability in Nazi characters, which in turn heighten the usefulness o f the stereotype as antagonist This usefulness is achieved by the familiarity, even intimacy that exists between spectator and villain, suggesting that it is not just the conveniently distant “other” who subscribes to havoc and destruction, but the very “self.” Consequently, the Hitchcockian stereotype evolved to work both as a tool to help the viewer cope with the unsettling surroundings within his society and as a reminder that he himself is an integral part of that flawed system 93 NOTES FOR CHAPTER III An exception to this pattern are period pictures of a more distant past, like Luther (1974) or the Beethoven biographies Magnificent Rebel (1961) and Immortal Beloved (1994) The obvious target for this display of superiority was the communist Soviet Union Exceptions to this trend are films like Decision before Dawn (1951) and Stalag 17 (1953) which are set in prison camps These movies feature at least one “good,” trustworthy German, though The first quotation is taken from Leif Furhammer and Folke Isaksson, Politics and Film, Trans Kersti French, (New York: Praeger Pub., 1971): 76 The second is attributed by Daniel Leab to John Mariani, “Let’s Not be Beastly to the Nazis,” Film Comment, 15 (January-February 1979), 49 In “Deutschland, USA: German Images in American Film,” in Randall Miller (ed.), The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, (Englewood, N.J.: Jerome S Ozer): 176 Examples o f such films are Green Eyes (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Hair (1979) The decline of World War II productions continued through the 1980s; by the 1990s, however, they made a comeback, with a focus on life in Germany during the Third Reich and the Holocaust Examples are Restless Conscience (1992), the story of a plot to assassinate Hitler, Schindler’s List (1993), which chronicles the protagonist’s attempt to save Jewish Germans from concentration camps, and Mother Night (1996), a film about an “ordinary” German who becomes unwittingly involved in Nazism and, later, neo-Nazism The World War II combat film becomes a rarity after 1980 and has only recently made a comeback with Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) The latter film is now considered “average at best.” In Martin Connors and James Craddock (eds.), VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever 1997, (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1997): 118 n Leab cites film critic Dwight Macdonald, who points to the Soviet Union’s blockade as the origin o f this shift: “the population of Berlin were transmuted from cowardly accomplices o f one kind of totalitarianism into heroic resisters of another kind.” In Leab, “Deutschland, USA,” 175 o It should be noted, though, that most Bond movies were financed by American studios like Unites Artists and MGM Three of the more recent installments of the series are actually U.S productions Juergens was known to American audiences because o f his diabolic character in Mephisto Waltz (1971), where his Germanness is again manifested by an accent, as well a penchant for German composers 10 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam find it noteworthy that in Raiders o f the Lost Ark the Jewish director created an epic scene in which the cruel Nazi and his French collaborator - allusions to the Vichy regime - are miraculously dissolved by the Hebrew ark, “saving Indiana Jones from the Nazis, who, unlike the Americans, ignore 94 the divine injunction against looking at the Holy of Holies The Jewish religious prohibition against looking at God’s image, and the censure of ‘graven images,’ triumphs over the Christian predilection for religious visualization Instantiating the typical paradox o f cinematic voyeurism, the film punishes the hubris o f the “Christian” who dares to gaze at divine beauty, while also generating spectacular visual pleasure for the viewer.” In Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, (New York: Routledge, 1994): 222223 It should also be noted that in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the villains are again destroyed by their greed for a biblical artifact which, although of nominal new-testament origin, kills the trespassers with old-testament wreath 11 That Russians were the new Nazified villains in Hollywood became evident as early as 1949 with the MGM production The Red Danube In the contemporarily-set film, Soviet soldiers persecute Russian citizens who have escaped to the Western occupational zones and deport them in overcrowded trains - much like Nazis treated their Jewish countrymen 12 In both films, the head foe is incidentally played by a British actor, Alan Rickman in the first Die Hard, and Jeremy Irons in the third A more thorough discussion of this phenomenon will be made in the next segment of this paper 13 The equation o f Communism with Nazism - obviously the point of this satire during the Cold War was a political reality that has often been criticized by historians See Reinhard Kuehnl, Der Deutsche Faschismus in Quellen und Dokumenten, (Koeln: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag): 10 14 The equation of the Borg with Nazis is made by the Trek-creators themselves: in an episode o f the weekly series Star Trek Voyager (UPN, 1990s), crew members are trapped in a holographic reenactment of occupied France and one officer informs an historically uninformed colleague that “Nazis were kinda like the Borg of their time.” 15 For a treatment on the importance and impact of Holocaust in the U.S as well as Germany, see Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return o f History as Film, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989): 28ff Helen Hirsch is also the catalyst that reveals Goeth’s pathological mental state: his progressing trouble with reality becomes clear when he compliments Helen on her housekeeping skills and offers to write her a reference for “after the war.” 17 The tendency toward complex antagonists in Holocaust treatments is also observable when the Germans have smaller roles An example is Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess (Guenther-Maria Halmer) in Sophie’s Choice (1982) Hoess, who is only seen in a handful of flashbacks, presides over mass murder while quibbling with his wife, fighting debilitating seizures, and considering an affair with the female protagonist (Meryl Streep won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a concentration camp survivor 1& The obvious exception is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, unlike the listed actors, has not received formal theatrical training and came into the movie business because of his success as a championed body-builder Still, he plays convincing autocratic villains in some of his most successful films, like Terminator (1987) and the starstudded Batman and Robin (1997) 95 19 Juergens debuted in the U.S with The Inn o f the Sixth Happiness (1958), playing a Chinese officer, Ingrid Bergman’s love interest; American audiences were therefore used to the tall blond actor wearing a uniform 20 The film is a largely U.S.-financed French-American co-production with stars like Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Anthony Perkins, and Orson Welles The script was written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola In VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever (1997), 389 21 In the latter film, Schell provides the foil character for Cobum’s benign German soldier, by playing an ambitious officer 22 This latest film also stars another German actor, Til Schweiger, as a silent killer Schweiger, who made his Hollywood debut with Replacement Killers, started his German career with comedies Other German or Austrian actors who match wits with 007 are Lotte Lenya as the murderous Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love (1969), the Austrian-bom and German-trained Klaus-Maria Brandauer in Never Say Never Again (1983), and, more recently, Gottfried John, who plays renegade Russian general Ourumor in Goldeneye (1996), and Goetz Otto, the blond assassin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) 24 Incidentally, all main German characters in Schindler ’s List were played by British actors: Liam Neesen portrayed Oscar Schindler, Ben Kingsley was his secretary, Itzhak Stem Interestingly, Hollywood also casts British-accented actors for the few positive postwar Germanic characters A famous example is The Sound o f Music (1964) with English Julie Andrews and Canadian Christopher Plummer Still, my claim that the Germanic male in film generally displays Nazi traits seems to hold true even in this popular musical: Baron von Trapp (Plummer) is an autocratic nationalist - highly decorated by the totalitarian regime of the Austrian Kaiser - and compulsive militarist whose personal family policy (a multitude of well-disciplined children) complies exactly with the official NSDAP party line 26 Daniel Leab finds that German-Americans “were not well liked” in the U.S., even before 1914 In Leab, “Deutschland, USA,” 158 97 Kier is known to American audiences as a James Bond villain-type with his role as shady entrepreneur Ronald Camp in Ace Ventura - Pet Detective (1994) who “collects” endangered animals and keeps a pet shark He also starred as Ralphie in Johnny Mnemonic (1995), where he not only subjects the protagonist to a dangerous experiment, but also betrays Johnny (Keanu Reeves) 9o This commercial is also an obvious allusion to the Bond series, made to have the audience identify with the master spy who always defeats the fascist Nazified villain 90 The Nazi connotation o f the soup cook is strengthened by the fact that he has an Arabic name and appearance, whereas the show’s main character in Jewish - a clear allusion to the sporadic Israeli accusation that its Islamic neighbors are Hitler’s heirs 30 Benator’s clip has, according to VH1, never been shown in Germany because of its offensive content: the singer poses as a World War II fighter pilot who thwarts a Nazi plot ' • ^ ^ * * * 96 -11 According to Shull and Wilt, animated characters had shown an awareness of world events as soon as 1933 In Shull and Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 78-79 Donald Duck is exposed to Nazi terror in the feature-length film Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) In Furhammar and Isaksson, Politics and Film, 58 32 Sander Gilman, Inscribing the Other, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991): 13 33 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997): 44ff 34 Wolfgang Gast evaluated the news series in “Typische Deutsche im Amerikanischen Femsehen,” in Lothar Bredella, Wolfgang Gast, and Siegfried Quandt, Deutschlandbilder im Amerikanischen Femsehen: Inhalte, Formen, Funktionen, (Tuebingen: Guenter Narr Verlag, 1994): 29-39 BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, M Joyce Images o f Women in Film: The War Years, 1941 -1945 Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980 Bredella, Lothar “Demonic Germans and Naive Americans: The Dialectics Between Hetero- and Auto-Stereotypes.” In Bredella (ed.), Mediating a Foreign Culture: The United States and Germany - 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Trans Frieda Grafe and Enno Patalas Muenchen: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1973 Westenrieder, Norbert "Deutsche Frauen und Maedchen! ” Vom Alltagsleben 1933 1945 Duesseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1984 Weis, Elisabeth The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock’s Sound Track London: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1982 Willett, Ralph The Americanization o f Germany, 1945 - 1949 New York: Routledge, 1989 Woll, Allen L and Randall M Miller Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987 Worland, Rick “OWI Meets the Monsters: Hollywood Horror Films and War Propaganda, 1942 to 1945.” Cinema Journal (No 1, 1997): 47 -65 VITA Christine Lokotsch Aube Bom in Bremen, Germany, October 30, 1964 Graduated from Kooperative Gesamtschule Brinkum in Stuhr, Germany, May 1983 B.A., Savannah State University, 1997 In August of 1997, the author entered the College of William and Mary as a candidate for the Masters of Art Degree in the Department of American Studies .. .THE ENDURING VILLAIN: GERMANS AS NAZI STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN CINEMA A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of American Studies The College of William and Mary in Virginia In. .. the concepts of Nazism and Germanness in American movie culture THE ENDURING VILLAIN: GERMANS AS NAZI STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN CINEMA INTRODUCTION We order our experiences through the symbolic act,... presented Nazis according to the conventions of the gangster film genre.4 The resulting stereotype, while certainly not the first negative depiction o f Germans in American cinema, has been a prominent